Description. 65 rainfall, to reach the Bahr el Arab. Like all the other streams in Darfur, these are dry in the dry season. On the eastern side of the mountains rise the Wady el Kho and the Wady Amur, the fall of the ground eastward towards the Nile being only very gradual, their course is almost due south. Neither of them reach the Bahr el Arab, but are finally lost in the sand about 200 miles to the south of El Fasher.

In the eastern part of Darfur the wells are of a considerable depth and at great distances from each other. The people are dependent to a great extent, in cultivated parts, on the baobab reservoirs and on melons (batikh).

This part of the country is described by Gordon as " most miserable—a sandy, bush-covered desert—quite useless for any food purpose, with no water for distances of 40 or 50 miles." The deepest wells are at Karnak, where water is only reached at 250 feet. At Brush, on the El Obeid road, and on the road to Towaisha the wells average 100 to 130 feet. In El Fasher the wells are of no great depth, and before the beginning of the rainy season water is reached at 35 feet. Here the Wadi system begins ; valleys into which the drainage from the north and north-west flows to lose itself in the wide plains to the south. At Towaisha, as well as throughout the portion of Darfur under consideration, the wells pass through layers of marl and chalk which renders the taste of the water unpleasant.

The nearer one approaches the central group of mountains the depth at which water is found diminishes ; at 3,200 feet above the sea it is found by excavating in the sand, but at 4,000 feet there is running water which becomes more abundant still further to the west of Jebel Marra.

The drainage from Jebel Marra flows to all points of the compass. On the north and north-east it is taken by the Wadi em Milkh (or Malik), which debouches at Debbeh on the Nile ; on the east, by the Wadi el Kob, which further on is lost in the plains to the south ; on the west, there are the two great Wadis of Barreh (or Turah) and Azum, which are both branches of the Wadi Kadja. The natives assert that the water in these three last is so plentiful during the rains that crocodiles and hippopotami are common, and fish are in abundance.

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